Zookeeper

2012 • 101 minutes
4.2
552 reviews
14%
Tomatometer
PG
Rating
Eligible
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About this movie

In Zookeeper, the animals at the Franklin Park Zoo love their kindhearted caretaker, Griffin Keyes (Kevin James). Finding himself more comfortable with a lion than a lady, Griffin decides the only way to get a girl in his life is to leave the zoo and find a more glamorous job. The animals, in a panic, decide to break their time-honored code of silence and reveal their biggest secret: they can talk! To keep Griffin from leaving, they decide to teach him the rules of courtship -- animal style. The film also stars Rosario Dawson and Leslie Bibb and features the voices of Cher, Nick Nolte, Adam Sandler, and Sylvester Stallone. MPAA Rating: PG Rated PG for some rude and suggestive humor, and language © 2011 Zookeeper Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Rating
PG

Ratings and reviews

4.2
552 reviews
Kyle Vansteelandt
January 21, 2021
Where do I even begin?! The message about being yourself is poorly executed due to the advice that Griffin has taken from the animals to win her ex-girlfriend back. These moments are not funny at all. They are so mindless and so preposterous, they will either insult the kids intelligence, or the kids will copy what they saw by flirting someone in creature style. The animals are horrible at giving advice, they are not helpful at all! The acting seems very uninspired and unconvincing, the performances go from lazy (lack of energy and fake) to stupidly cartoony. The two actors (Kevin James and Ken Jeong) are just being themselves, Kevin is just playing the same character again; a nice man that has a desire for a girl and constantly falling down for slapstick gags. Ken is being his awkward cringey self in this film, Man! the casting is bad. And even the cast of celebrities voicing the animals is bad, The voice performances from the actors are all over the place; they talk in weird, unpleasant, unrealistic accents that are over the top and sometimes melodramatic, and as a comedy, the entire voice cast are also not an authentic fit for the animals with the precision of zoology, except for Sylvester Stallone and Cher who voiced the lions, but on top of that, the voice acting is poorly directed. There is also a few moments of animal abuse and it offends me as an animal lover myself who has learned about animals for years. The script has something to do with animals eating human food; popcorn, pretzels, muffins, and even soda. Even some of the animal facts are not accurate, saying a bear's paw is useless, monkeys are the kings of the jungle, a crow is a zoo animal, bears eat humans, lions cut prey from herds to attract mates. As a comedy, it is an empty unfunny painfully filler with thin predictable slapstick, and some of the dialogue (including the jokes that were written) make no sense at all. The story is not even good; in the second act of the film, Griffin and Bernie the gorilla go hang out and have a blast together just for the sake of entertainment, and there is no entertainment value here at all. And the entire plot is basically a message saying "don't act like an animal or pretend to be someone you are not, be yourself and you'll be cool." But again, the moral is poorly executed. Do the kids even care and root for Griffin for getting his girl back? Nope. All they care about are the talking animals. That's it. It is a romantic comedy that has animals to get the children's attention, and it fails! The truth is that there are some redeemable qualities: Sylvester Stallone as Joe the male lion is a very authentic choice, because a male lion is a robust and ferocious apex predator, but males sleep 20 hours a day, so they are relatively lazy. The gorilla suit looks exactly like a real western lowland gorilla, The two villains; Shane (Donnie Wahlberg) and Stephanie (Leslie Bibb) have strong antagonistic characterizations alongside their brilliant performances. They are so convincing because they reflect the awful things that real unlikable stereotypes do. There is also a heartbreaking backstory involving Shane and Bernie the gorilla. There's a decent score by Rupert Gregson Williams, and Griffin (Kevin James) is a likable protagonist because he loves animals and hates humans that hate animals, But there are a few problems with him: Griffin tells ridiculous lies, he should've punched Stephane in the face, and Kevin James's acting is not very convincing as an animal lover who takes the job seriously. There are better family comedies out there that are smarter and more mature. Kids are smarter than this. This film shows that movies don't teach kids and bring messages, there are more things that do teach kids something in the right way, like your parents, friends, and even teachers. Not movies! In spite of some redeemable aspects, Zookeeper is a ridiculous and brainless disposable excuse for a family film. Skip It!
10 people found this review helpful
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Kylie Anderson
January 11, 2018
Pretty good, kinda similar to dr. Doolittle. It's okay for a family movie night. I've read some of the reviews on here that say otherwise, so, I guess you be the judge. Imo, those reviews seem to be nitpicking. There is a lot of movies out there with far worse material in it than this movie. But, again, you be the judge.
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A Google user
September 12, 2017
This is another one of those family movies that go way beyond the borders of weird just to get a few chuckles. It's movies like these that give me more reasons to hate family movie night.
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